Download Ephesians 2:1-3 Am I an object of wrath or an

1
Ephesians 2:1-3
Am I an object of wrath or an object of love?
Edwards vs Osteen Round 1
“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a
spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is
dreadfully provoked. His wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks
upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. He is
of purer eyes than to bear you in his sight; you are ten thousand
times as abominable in his eyes as the most hateful, venomous
serpent is in ours.”1
This quote comes from one of the greatest minds America has ever produced. One
of the key preachers during the great awakening, one of my heroes.
He is convinced that God finds you unworthy and more abominable than the most
hated venomous serpent.
That’s some strong language.
And we all know this God.
This all powerful, scary, wrath-filled God. A God of wrath.
Nahum 1:2 is quite clear:
A jealous and avenging God is the LORD; The LORD is
avenging and wrathful. The LORD takes vengeance on His
adversaries, And He reserves wrath for His enemies.
And then along comes the letter to the Romans saying that the carnal
mind is hostile to God—and enemy of God. And Ephesians says that
we are, like the rest, by nature, objects of wrath.
It seems to be saying that God is a God of wrath and that we are people of
that wrath.
I have to say, that is not very attractive to me. I don’t much like this God.
I prefer the nice, caring, gentle God. I want the God that I introduce to
friends and my children to be loving, not wrathful.
I don’t want the Nahum God, I want the Psalm 25:6 God
1
Jonathan Edwards, Sinners in the hands of an angry God
2
Remember, O LORD, your great mercy
and love, for they are from of old.
I like deities who give hugs and let me poke their nose and I don’t really prefer ones with
lightning bolts who really kind of despise me.
But Eph 2:3 seem frighteningly clear that,
We were by nature objects of wrath.
Dangling over hell, so says Edwards.
So, perhaps I need to go the other direction. Look for preachers who give me what I want.
Joel Osteen, preacher for the largest church in America says
“Listen; don’t dangle people over the fires of hell. Lisa and I always kid about, you
know, we’re going to dangle them over the fires of hell. Listen, that doesn’t draw people
to God. They know what kind of life they live. They know how bad they’ve lived. What
you’ve got to do is talk about the goodness of God. Listen, it’s the goodness of God that
brings people to repentance. It’s the goodness of God. One thing I always appreciated
about my dad is that he instilled into us a good vision of who God was. We learned about
a good God.”2
This God is way better than Edward’s God.
But this isn’t about my preferences, this is about the character of God. And Ephesians 2 says that
we are under the wrath of God.
Doesn’t it?
At least this is what most commentators argue and this is what all my favorite preachers argue.
So, the question I have sought to answer over the last several weeks and that I will try to answer
for you this morning, is “what does God think of us, before we are saved?”
To be more specific, “what does Paul say about the pre-converted and how does God’s wrath
relate to this. Because the word “wrath is right there” there is no way I can get around that word,
no matter how much I want to.
2
Osteen sermon, “What the Resurrection means to us as believers.” “I think for years there's been a lot of hellfire
and damnation. You go to church to figure out what you're doing wrong and you leave feeling bad like you're not
going to make it,” Osteen said. “We believe in focusing on the goodness of God” (Fox News, Feb. 03, 2004, as
reported by Amy C. Sims)
3
But let me say this ahead of time: I think Edwards (hanging over hell on a spider web) is wrong.
I think this is a man who was so wrapped in his culture that he couldn’t see the full picture of
God—at least not in this one clip.
But let me say this too. I think Osteen is dead wrong as well. Because, he too is a man of his
culture who seems afraid to wrestle with what Edwards clearly saw in Scripture.
So, is God the angry God of Nahum or the loving God of Psalms 25?
In what state are unbelievers in Ephesians 2?
I want to answer this, but I want to get to the larger question by first asking about our specific
text. Because Ephesians 2:3 has a context. It is the culmination of the 2.5 verses prior.
In these verses he says that unbelievers are dead, been seduced by the devil, living in lust, and
have bought into cultural lies. And he ends all that by saying that they are by nature, objects of
wrath (one translation says “deserving of wrath”).
That doesn’t sound like Osteen’s God; that definitely sounds
more like Edwards. And I have to say I am tempted to try to
lessen this. My emotions cry out for Paul to stop talking about
wrath and talk about love. Threats of wrath and hell don’t save
anyone. Chick Tracts with hellfire just don’t work. I repent
regularly for reading that stuff and believing it.
But we still havent actually looked at the text. Let’s read it now (I will read in the NIV for now):
NIV
Ephesians 2:1 As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins,
2
in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of
the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.
3
All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature
and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.
So, we have our context, but the context is actually larger. Please don’t forget that there are no
chapter divisions in Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus. This wasn’t meant as a doctrinal
dissertation; he has a theme that he wants the people in this area of the world to know.
And right now he is trying to answer the question of how they got into the story.
Where do the Gentiles come into the story?
That’s how verse 1 begins,
1 So where do you come into it all?
That’s the Kingdom translation. Trying to make clear the earlier context
That they will know the hope of the call
That they will know the glory of their inheritance
That they will know the power of the resurrection.
4
This is what they should know, but how did they get started in the story? How did they come to
have their eyes opened?
Well, it started when they were still dead.
That is, it started when we were completely living for our own desires, going along with the
world, listening to the devil.
That is, when we were objects of wrath. See, that last phrase is a way of recounting what kind of
people they were.
Where do the Gentiles come into it, well, they come into it dead. Dead in offences and sins. This
is just two different words for sin/transgression/mess ups/etc, but they give the idea of being sins
of commission and sins of omission.
Not just things you do that you shouldn’t do, but things you don’t do that you should. It’s talking
about works. Your works have made you dead. At least that is what you were.
What is the road to death?
2
in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and
I like the direction of the kingdom translation here
2 That was the road you used to travel,
The road to death is the road you used to travel. Notice, he obviously doesn’t mean you are really
dead, but death in the OT sense of the word which is wandering, outside of the land of God.
Alone. Going the wrong direction.
The state that you are in before meeting Christ could be illustrated a thousand ways. I might say
you were very sick, or that you were drowning or that you were dead, or going in the wrong
direction. I might say you were living in New Jersey.
That’s what Ephesians 2 is. It’s being stuck in Jersey, on the turnpike.
You know that moment, 20 seconds after getting on, when you realize you are going the wrong
direction. Of course, you have never been to Jersey before so you start looking for a way to get
off and after 5 minutes of driving you don’t see a single exit. Everywhere you hope to turn
around bears no fruit. It just gets worse and worse and you wind up going 20 minutes in the
opposite direction. I hate Jersey. That and those stupid right hand turns to make a left, and they
don’t let you pump your own gas. What am I, an invalid? Every day since I was 16 I have
pumped my own gas, but apparently I am incapable when I get to Jersey.
Alone, going in the wrong direction.
In Jersey.
5
That’s death
How does he describe the death? How does he look at what it means to be travelling in the
wrong direction?
It’s keeping in step with the “present age”
It’s being empowered by the ruler of the power of the air
It’s behaving according to our lusts.
Look at verse 2
keeping in step with this world’s ‘present age’; in step, too, with the ruler of the power of
the air, the spirit that is, even now, at work among people whose whole lives consist of
disobeying God. 3 Actually, that’s how all of us used to behave, conditioned by physical
desires. We used to do what our flesh and our minds were urging us to do.
What are the three ways the wrong direction is described?
What’s the wrong direction? Its described three different ways.
1. The present age
2. Our own physical wants
3. The work of Satan
Some people have described it this way: the world, the flesh and the devil.
Do you know these enemies?
What is the Present Age?
The present age. In Hebrew thinking there was a present and a future age. The future age was
one where the kingdom of God has come. The present age is still messy and selfish and
incomplete. Of course, Paul makes clear elsewhere that they end up being wrong about how the
present age ends and the future age begins. Its actually that the present age and the future age
coexist for a time and the kingdom is ushered in as we advance it. But this idea of a present age
was clear to them. It was the world system. It was the way things were before the cross. Its
everything in creation that stil conspires conspire against you actually living the life God has for
you.
Today you might include every commercial on TV, you might include politics, you might
include our understanding of war as good, you might include our dating ideas. Cultural things
that we have bought as perfectly okay even though we
What is the flesh?
The flesh. Not your actual flesh, there is nothing wrong with your body. Please do not buy into
Platonic dualism. That the spirit is good and the body is evil. That is not only not found in
scripture, it is anti-scriptural. I think some authors of scripture go out of their way to explain
philosophically that this is not tenable. They know Plato and they disagree. The flesh just means
the lustful desires that we have that pull us away from Jesus. Whether that is for food, drink,
6
sleep, sex, candy, power, fame, even family, whatever it is you want. Bad things and good
things. Remember idols are just good things that we prioritize above God.
What is the prince of the power of the air?
The Devil. Paul seems to make this a third category, the prince of the power of the air. There is a
temptation that gnaws at us that can only be described as other worldly. Something that is so
powerfully intoxicating that only the idea of a devil will adequately encapsulate it.
What does it mean to be objects of wrath?
And that’s when he calls us “objects of the wrath of God.”
The wrath of God? That’s how Paul summarizes this section. We are under the wrath of God.
Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath.
What was the result? We too were subject to wrath in our natural state, just like everyone
else
It seems from this verse that Edwards is right. Osteen very wrong.
But I just did the same thing that teachers and preachers do every day, sometimes accidentally,
sometimes on purpose. They use names that people respect to make their point. They use
Scripture to say what they want.
But this passage actually isn’t clear regarding who this wrath belongs to.
The emphasis in Ephesians is one of peace
The Greek just says we are “children of wrath,” and the more I look at it the more I am
convinced that this is not the wrath of God at all. See Ephesians is a very different kind of book
than we think it is. Ephesians is not about peace in the soul, but peace in the world. It’s about
peace to Gentiles as well as Jews. But regardless its main emphasis is peace. The problem is that
our works, the world’s works, the devils works aren’t peace oriented, they are wrath oriented.
And they result in children of wrath.
This is what happens when we misplace our obedience in the ruler of the power of the air. We
become like him. Children of wrath.
Whose wrath is being talked about?
So, is this passage about the wrath of God?
No, the beauty of this passage is that it contrasts us as children of wrath (not God’s wrath) with
God who is rich in mercy.
Camp on verse 4 for just a moment.
7
4 But when it comes to mercy, God is rich! He had such great love for us that 5 He took
us at the very point where we were dead through our offences, and made us alive
together with the king (yes, you are saved by sheer grace!). 6 He raised us up with Him,
and made us sit with Him – in the heavenly places, in King Jesus! 7 This was so that in
the ages to come He could show just how unbelievably rich His grace is, the kindness He
has shown us in King Jesus.
Now this could be a contrast between God’s wrath and his mercy, or it could be a contrast
between who we are and who God is—who we are—people of death, captivated by Satan, the
world and our flesh, people who have accepted wrath as a way of life contrasted with God who
has a great love for us.
And this fits well within the argument of Paul in Ephesians. Because in chapter 4 (vs 31), Paul
will call the people to get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger. In verse 32 he will say be kind and
compassionate and the very next verse 5:1 tells us to be imitators of God, as dearly loved
children living a life of love.
He can’t be called a wrathful God and then a few lines later call us not to be wrathful people, but
rather to imitate him because he isn’t wrathful.
But even if this isn’t about God’s wrath, it’s still a big theme right?
Okay, Pastor Jace, let’s assume you are right and this passage says nothing about the wrath of
God. Does that somehow answer the larger question of whether God is an angry God at all?
The answer is quite obviously no. But it does help us a bit. It reminds us that there are ways to
understand texts different than the ways we always assumed. That if Ephesians isn’t about the
wrath of God, then maybe some of the other passages we are convinced are about his wrath,
aren’t actually about that.
But let me say clearly, I think God gets angry. My problem isn’t with a God who gets angry. It’s
with an angry God. Can you hear the difference? It may sound minor, but I think it’s huge.
Deut 31: 16-17 says,
They will forsake me and break the covenant I made with them. I will become angry with
them.
I Kings 11:9a says that he was angry at Solomon
Bible Scholar J Fichtner says that wrath appears 455 times in the OT, 375 speak of the wrath of
God. (I didn’t check to see if he was right, but even if many of those passages are misunderstood
[like our Ephesians passage], it is probable that some of those are right.
We must see a God who gets angry.
8
Lactantius, third century church father was right when he said “he who does not get angry does
not care.”3
He gets angry sometimes, being righteous demands that he be angry at unrighteousness, but he
doesn’t sit in heaven angry at us. He gets angry, but he is not an angry God.
Again, what about appeasing God’s wrath?
Of course, this bring up all kinds of questions about Penal substitutionary atonement. That God’s
wrath is appeased. That he punishes animals to take care of his constant state of wrath towards
unbelievers. I recognize the huge problems here between expiation and propitiation.
Everyone does:
Many churches refuse to sing “in Christ Alone” because Getty and Townend refuse to allow
them to remove this wrath language
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied
They want to change it to,
The love of God was magnified
This is not an easy issue. How should we understand the work of Jesus on the cross? Is God the
hater of puny humans and Jesus has to save us from his wrath? Or are the arms of Jesus a
welcome by a loving father? What if Jesus saves us from the consequence of sin, the
consequence of being a child of wrath, and not from a wrath-filled God?
Careless language about God’s wrath leaves the impression that God is angry at humans, but
Christ loves them and gains God’s favor from them by dying on the cross. But the cross does not
gain back God’s favor. Rather, God’s favor was the basis of Jesus’ death.
But God,
Romans 5:8 reminds us that God demonstrated his love in sending Christ while we were still
sinners.
And Ephesians 2, says that while we were children of wrath, God who was rich in mercy.
Lloyd Jones has a phenomenal sermon entitled “But God” where he reminds his people over and
over
This is who you were
But God in his mercy
But God because he loved us
But God in his grace
But God, based on nothing meritorious in us.
3
A treastise on the anger of God, secs 5-6, 16-17
9
We were dead in trespasses and sins, exiled from God, lacking an inheritance, living by our lust,
living according to the world, living for Satan, BUT GOD,
But God loved us even in that state. He wasn’t sitting in heaven angry at you. He so loved you
that he sent his son, that whosoever believes in him will not perish but have ever lasting life.
What does God think of us? I think if Osteen read all of Edwards sermon and other sermons he
might see that Edwards didn’t necessarily have a view of God as filled with wrath. He would see
that Edwards has a God who gets angry. Unfortunately, his rhetoric is so powerful and so quoted
that people have begun to see God as angry, instead of as a God who gets angry.
And then we Christians think its our job to be angry at everyone who sins and in so doing we are
faithful in imitating God. So we are angry at Palestinians and angry at homosexuals and angry at
people who understand the Bible differently than we do and we accidentally end up being angry
people instead of people who sometimes get angry.
Driscoll vs Meyers round 1
That’s the result of Mark Driscoll’s scary words:
“Some of you, God hates you. Some of you, God is sick of you. God is frustrated with
you. God is wearied by you. God has suffered long enough with you. He doesn’t think
you’re cute. He doesn’t think it’s funny. He doesn’t think your excuse is [“meritorious”]
He doesn’t care if you compare yourself to someone worse than you, He hates them too.
God hates, right now, personally, objectively hates some of you.”4
Really? Does that do justice to the overarching theme of Scripture that God so loves you that he
sends his son. Not he so hates you that he sends his son so that he might love you.
Even if Driscoll comes back around and says that God loves us, how can you ever hear it with
this rhetoric so highly amped.
I think Joyce Meyer, who I recommend that no one here read or listen to misses the balance as
well.
She says,
When sharing the Gospel with someone, I think it's very important to let them know that
God is not mad. It's so sad that many people - believers and nonbelievers alike - think
that He is an angry God just waiting around to punish them.5
That is sad. If people believe that God is just waiting around to punish them then they are seeing
a God that I don’t see in Scripture. But it is important to let people know that this loving God
sometimes gets angry. Because we have become children of wrath.
4
5
Mark Driscoll, http://theamericanjesus.net/?p=4182#sthash.WqMHKld3.dpuf
Sept/Oct 2013 magazine, "ENJOYING EVERYDAY LIFE," page 2
10
But, once again, God’s beginning and end point for his interactions with creation is not
anger, but love. It is God’s love, not God’s anger, that stirs God’s wrath throughout the
Bible. God’s wrath is stirred out of love for his creation and he becomes angry because
he is heartbroken that the least of his creation is being trampled on his name by those he
chose to serve the least, the lost, and the dying.
Odd though it may sound, we need a God who gets angry.
We need a God who sees oppression and poverty and injustice and hunger and disease
and homeless and heartache and loneliness and all the other unloving things we do to
each other and gets angry because this is not the way he created the world to be.
We need this sort of God because there is hope in a God who cannot abide the way things
are and chooses to change the world for the better.
There is hope that this God’s holy anger will not allow injustice and pain and oppression
to continue forever, but will one day come and dwell among us forever. We will be his
people, and God himself will be with us and be our God. He will wipe every tear from
our eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of
things has passed away. For God will have made all things new.
This is what God’s anger leads to.
Not wrath, abuse, oppression, and injustice.
But liberation, hope, and life eternal.
Because God is not an angry God who wants his people to suffer.
God is a God who gets angry when he sees his people suffer.6
Friends, we must keep the tension in scripture between God’s anger and his mercy. There are
times to emphasize one more than the other I am sure, but never mistake his anger as coming
from an angry God. Never mistake his anger as contrasted with his love.
This God loves you. More than you can ever know.
Even while you were trapped in this present age, following Satan and the lusts of your flesh,
dead. He came and made you alive and adopted you and delivered you and gave you an
inheritance.
Don’t forget what he did.
Let’s pray.
6
Zach Hunt,
http://theamericanjesus.net/?p=4182#sthash.WqMHKld3.dpuf